PETA wants to sue web opponents

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is so angry that it has been caught out euthanising animals in one Virginia shelter that it wants to sue the online magazine that revealed it.

According to the New York Post, the Huffington Post detailed how PETA euthanised puppies and kittens in a Virginia shelter that many had assumed is a “no kill” shelter. It could not have done anything worse, short of sticking the bodies in a fast food chain where they were sold as a vegan burger.

While the article itself has miffed PETA, according to the New York Post there was nothing that the animal rights group could do about that. The problem is that PETA can’t really argue that the article is wrong. More than 90 percent of animals are killed within the first 24 hours of being placed in the shelter. That is probably faster than many abattoirs. The paper work was prepared by the Virginia Department of Agriculture inspector.

What has got PETA’s goat is that it does not like being called “animal Kervorkians”. This was a reference to “Dr Death” who performed assisted suicides. PETA would like legal retribution against people who leave posts like that.

But instead it wants to sue some of the people who have left comments on the article and is attempting to discover the true identities of their critics so that it can sue them for defamation.

Obviously to lay observers, it seems that PETA really does not like a taste of its own medicine. We are talking about the outfit which does not exactly use temperate language where it comes to people who eat meat or wear fur coats.

Filing a law suit against those who calls it names on the internet is exactly the sort of thing that even the big agricultural lobby groups would not bother with.

The problem is that PETA, which does have support among those who are clawing their back down the food chain, might lose a few of those friends if they are seen as being a bully against free speech. It is that free speech that PETA needs to carry out its own stunts.